Detailed specifications of the new drives were also available via the website

A PDF accidentally showed up on Seagate's website earlier today with the latest details on perpendicular desktop hard drives

Seagate insiders contacted us early this morning with a few snippets of information (PDF) concerning the upcoming Barracuda 7200.10 series hard drives. Like other Barracuda drives, the 7200.10 series are based on 7,200RPM spindles.

Two 750GB models have already shown up on the Seagate website. The Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640A (PATA) and the ST3750640SA (SATA) will be two new models we can look forward to seeing this year. The Seagate webpage reveals dozens of other NCQ-ready 7200.10 based products ranging from 200GB on up. Cache information was not available via the website yet, but the official Seagate PDF claims the Barracuda 7200.10 series will come with 16MB and 8MB buffers. Considering these two drives will be the best of breed for Seagate, it is fairly safe to assume these drives will have 16MB caches.

Seagate representatives have told us that the information posted was "very premature" and was not be posted on the website for several weeks. Seek time information has not been released yet, which has traditionally been considered the problem area for perpendicular recording devices. However, the 7200.10 datasheet claims all drives in the series will have a 4.16ms average latency time.

Several days ago Seagate announced its Cheetah 15K.5 series drives based on 15,000RPM platters. The Cheetah 15K.5 series also uses perpendicular recording to increase densities, but is solely limited to SCSI right now. Pricing is not available yet on either the 15K.5 or 7200.10 series. All Seagate hard drives come with 5-year warranties.

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In my personal experience, I've had more Seagate drives die on me than WD's, but regardless seagateswarranty service is top notch, and I had a replacement at my door shortly. WD's service is also just as good though too.

If you call paying $24.99 to get a replacement sent to you, or having to wait over a week and pay your own shipping, top notch I want to work for you. Luckily if they send you a defective replacement, then they will do the advanced exchange for free, only taking 4 days to arrive.

I find it ironic all the hate you guys are showing for Maxtor and the love for WD... In over a decade of building PC's (mostly for myself - but a few for other people) I've had about 4 separate WD drives fail on me or arrive DoA. All bought at separate places mind you, and at separate times. Mean while, I only had one problematic Maxtor drive - the rest have been golden.

I no longer use WD..in my mind they are the trashy HDD, not Maxtor. WD is popular because they are "trendy". They have the most famous brand name recognition (kind of like McDonald's or Nike). Their quality is suspect to me though.

As for Seagate..only used about 5 of those my whole life..but not a single problem with any of those...I'm looking to Seagate for my next gaming PC project.

I have to agree. I've purchased 5 WDs over the years because of the good reviews and price/performance numbers. Unfortunately, every one has died on me (they've only lasted 6 months to 3 years). Whereas I have only seen one Seagate fail, and have never had a problem with Maxtor. That's finally enough that I will never trust WD again.